Completing your BAS from MYOB Essentials

BAS time in Australia always seems to roll around faster than you’d like. If you lodge your BAS quarterly, your first BAS for 2014/2015 is due on 28 October.

Your due date is written on the top of your BAS, and listed in your MYOB Essentials GST Settings. The ATO website also has a helpful guide to lodgement dates on their website.

MYOB Essentials makes it really easy to get the information to complete your BAS.

Setting up GST reporting in MYOB Essentials

Use the GST settings page to set up the way MYOB Essentials deals with your GST.

You should confirm the following with your accountant or MYOB consultant before setting up your GST reporting:

when you report your BAS (quarterly or monthly),

what you need to report (GST, PAYG instalments, FBT considerations), and

whether you report Cash or Accruals (that’s basically whether you report GST to the ATO when you make a sale - Accrual, or when you actually get paid for the sale - Cash).

After you’ve set up your GST reporting, each time you need to complete a BAS, you can simply run the GST Report for Activity Statement. This report displays totals for your GST and sales ready for you to copy directly into the fields in your BAS form.

So, in the example here, you enter $55.00 at the G4 field.

Filling in the W fields in your BAS

You’ll need to complete the W fields in your BAS to report any amounts withheld for PAYG.

From the payroll reports section, select Payroll Summary and Details.

Enter the dates for your BAS report and click Summary report.

From the report, enter the total of the Gross column in the W1 field, and enter the total of the PAYG column in the W2 field.

The W4 field is where you can record amounts you’ve withheld from suppliers for not providing an ABN.

The W3 field is for other amounts you’ve withheld not covered by W2 or W4. You can find out more about these on the ATO website.

Most people find they don’t need to report anything at W3 and W4.

The W5 field is the sum of W2, W3 and W4, so you may find that you enter the same figure at W2 and W5.

Remember to also write the amount from W5 at 4 in the Summary section of the BAS.

Lodging your BAS

The ATO gives you options to lodge your BAS electronically through the Business Portal. Lodging electronically may give you extra time to lodge and pay your BAS. Find out more on the ATO website.

Common GST mistakes in BAS reporting

If you can’t figure out where you’ve gone wrong with some BAS reporting, this blog post by Amanda Hoffman, founder of My Office Books and registered BAS agent may just sort you out.

Thanks for dropping me a line here, and for being such a vocal champion of electronic submission to the ATO. It's a great idea, and one that I'd love to see implemented too. I see there are a few posts that you've added your voice to.

As you know we use a combination of the feedback from blogs, the community forum and our in product suveys to help us decide what we focus on for development next, and a quick look at the top ideas tab will give you some idea of just how varied the feedback and voting is.

We're in the process of locking in our plans for 2015, and all the feedback about SBR and lodging electronically is being well and truly heard and considered, along with the rest of the top ideas.

Just to clarify, there isn't a way to download a BAS form from MYOB Essentials. As described in the post, you generate the GST for Activity Statements report, which gives you the figures you need to fill in on your BAS, and the field to enter the amount.

You can then lodge your completed BAS with the ATO either electronically through the ATO portal, or by mail.

Not sure if I am doing something wrong or misreading my reports but I have done the GST report for the BAS and the figure for GST Paid does not equal the total of the GST I have paid when adding all the GST amounts for the quarter in my Profit and Loss. Both reports are operating on a Cash basis. I only noticed this last quarter but have gone back and done the same exersice for previous quarters with the same problem. Am I missing something here?

The profit and loss report shows income, cost of sales and expenses without including the GST value. Also if any amount has been allocated to an income, cost of sales or expense account, and hasn't had a tax rate other than GST it will appear in your profit and loss, but won't contribute to your GST sales. Also if any amount sale or purchase amount does have GST, but hasn't been allocated to an income, cost of sales or expense account (if it's been allocated to an asset, liability or equity account) then it won't appear on your profit and loss, but will contribute to your GST.

For these reasons there may be differences between your GST reports and your profit and loss. Your GST reports will show you the GST you owe, while the profit and loss may not.